It’s Not One Thing, It’s a Bunch

No, I don’t think anyone in the Brady Bunch ever had ADD, but I just couldn’t resist. 🙂

So if we’re not talking about the Brady Bunch, what are we talking about?

My kitchen, of course.

This year a lot of DIY stuff has been going on at our house. We are (still) installing hardwood floors and doing some painting.

Which leads me to the kitchen.

My husband Mark does most of the DIY stuff around here cause he’s the one with the skills. He also works a lot of hours at his job, which doesn’t leave him a lot of time for what needs to get done around the house.

One thing on his list for some time is painting the kitchen.

I realized the other day as I was filling out my brand new ADD Moms Lifeskills planner (more on this later this week!), that “paint the kitchen” is not a proper to do list item.

Or maybe I mean there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s not one thing, it’s a bunch. Get it?

In order for us to paint the kitchen, there are a lot of prep steps that have to be done first.

For instance, because it’s a kitchen, the walls and cupboards tend to get greasy as well as dirty.

That means that they need to be washed first. Not fun, but necessary.

In order to wash the kitchen walls and cupboards, I need a cleaner designed to do the job easily.

And to acquire said cleaner, I need to buy it. Wait, I need to remember to buy it.

That is really the heart of why the kitchen has remained unpainted all summer. Something as small and silly as that.

Because that’s how we work.

If I’m in the kitchen and thinking about painting it, of course I see right away that washing the walls and buying the cleaner have to come first.

But that’s only for that moment. If I leave the kitchen, to say, run to the store, do I remember the cleaner? Well, it’s been a few months and so far that hasn’t happened, so, no.

This is the habit that we all need to master: break down what seems to be one to do into it’s bunches of parts. Once you identify the first step you need to take, you put it on your to do list and then schedule a time to actually do it.

This one habit alone could change your life.

And be sure to stay tuned later this week. I’m introducing the first ever day planner just for ADD Moms!